


Old Haunts

by aliaoftwoworlds



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Tony, Post-Avengers (2012), a team as family sort of story from me for once, discussions of Afghanistan but not graphic, still featuring some good angst though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:04:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliaoftwoworlds/pseuds/aliaoftwoworlds
Summary: A nice, simple camping trip, that’s what Steve said, in that ridiculously earnest way of his. Team bonding and all that jazz. Of course, with the Avengers, nothing is ever simple.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was camping up north last weekend and kept wanting to write this, so have some nice happy team bonding fluff from sometime after Avengers 1, back in the good old days where we all thought the team could be a happy family instead of the disaster it turned into. Of course, it’s me, so I can’t avoid a little angst for poor Tony. I know I owe everyone the next Bitter Retribution and some Tales from Tolsar, and I’m thinking about doing a special fic where the plot comes from readers’ comments, but sleeping in a tent in the woods outside our cabin made me not want to work on anything but this. 
> 
> As a little disclaimer/sidenote, I’ve never been to Maine and I don’t know firsthand what the wilderness looks like up there, but I know it has some gorgeous, pretty much untouched stretches and I assume it’s fairly similar to where I live.

There’s a smacking sound from behind Steve and Tony makes a triumphant noise, quickly followed by a disgusted one.

“Gross,” Clint comments, then there’s a shuffling sound, a twig snaps, and Clint exclaims, “Don’t get it on me! Gross!”

“That’s what you get,” Tony says. Steve is torn between wanting to roll his eyes and smile fondly at the purposely adopted childish tone.

“Hey, I was sympathetic the first two hundred times. Now it’s just annoying.”

“Yeah, it’s annoying me, too, that these mosquitoes won’t—” There’s a pause and another smacking sound, “leave me the _hell_ alone!”

“Maybe you attract them with all your complaining,” Natasha says flatly, and Steve can’t help but grin at that.

“You know what, you’re right, I’m clearly causing all of the problems here, I won’t shut up, I’m attracting bugs… how about I just go home? You can all camp in peace and I’ll—”

Steve finally turns around, walking backwards along the path so he can give Tony a stern look. He’s pretty sure Tony’s not actually serious, though he does slump and grumble under his breath when he catches Steve’s gaze.

“You’re as much a part of this team as any of us, and we’re doing this to improve our teamwork,” Steve says firmly, ignoring the ill-concealed eye roll from Tony. “We’re also here to have fun, you know, so how about you try to enjoy it?”

Tony throws him a look full of snark but no real heat. “You know what I enjoy? Sitting on a beach on a private island and sipping a margarita. With all of my blood inside my body, where it belongs. Not hiking through the woods and sleeping on the ground and being slowly eaten alive by little _bastards_.” He says the last word vehemently, slapping at his arm once more.

“Only the female mosquitoes drink blood,” Clint chimes in. Tony throws him a dirty look before Steve can try to indicate how unhelpful he’s being.

“Bastard can be a gender-neutral term of hatred. I’ll call them whatever the hell I want.” He turns his attention back to Steve. “How exactly is crapping in the woods and probably catching malaria going to help us fight aliens any better?”

Steve shakes his head as he finally turns back around, making sure he isn’t veering off the path. “You’re not going to catch malaria in Maine. And it wouldn’t kill you to appreciate nature every once in a while.”

“I can appreciate nature plenty from the comfort of a nice building,” Tony grumbles, but he at least falls silent for a while.

They keep walking until the path disappears, then hike through the forest for a while more, picking their way between trees, feet crunching in old fallen leaves and twigs. Steve hears Tony make a few impatient noises behind him, then he swears under his breath.

Steve turns to see Tony’s large pack caught on a spiny branch that Steve and the others had simply ducked beneath. Clint snickers when he turns and sees Tony’s predicament. Steve is already moving forward to help, but Tony reaches up and disentangles himself with one hand while he flips Clint off with the other one.

“Aw, I’m hurt,” Clint says with a wide smile, holding one hand over his heart. “Having some trouble out here where there’s no tech and you can’t just pay anyone to make it easier?” The comment could be truly insulting, but there’s something in Clint’s tone that makes it clear it’s only meant in jest.

“Why don’t you go climb a tree and stay up it if you love it out here so much, Birdbrain,” Tony says, then swears again under his breath when he has to duck low under a branch and almost topples over from the weight of the oversized pack on his back.

Steve’s honestly impressed with how much weight he’s been carrying; he’s easily packed half again as much as the rest of them and though he’s been complaining nearly nonstop since they left the cars and started the hike through the woods, he doesn’t seem to be physically struggling. “Why are you carrying so much, anyway?” Steve asks, genuinely curious.

To his surprise, Tony doesn’t come back with some smart comment. Instead, he looks away, ducking beneath one more low branch until he’s nearly level with where Steve is wending his way through the trees. “Have you seen the weather reports?” he mutters, “It’s going to be in the fifties at night. Freezing.”

“Sleeping in a cold room is actually the most comfortable, and the best way to get good sleep.” Natasha says it like she’s reading from a textbook.

“Yeah, when you’re in a warm bed, with plenty of blankets,” Tony counters.

They walk for about another half an hour before Steve finds a clearing with relatively even ground that seems like a good place to set up camp. They’re about fifty or so yards from a river, and the trees are clear far enough around the area that they shouldn’t cause any problems by making a fire in the center. It will also mean they should have a spectacular view of the stars at night.

Tony is uncharacteristically quiet as they all begin setting up camp. He gets his tent together faster than Steve would have expected, considering that he told Steve when this trip was proposed that “Howard wasn’t exactly the camping type,” and Steve had let it go, knowing Howard was a touchy subject for Tony. He didn’t need to know any more anyway; Tony had never been camping before, okay. This could be a new experience for him. Hopefully a good one, despite his initial complaints.

They set their four one-man tents up in a semicircle. Steve went out and got the equipment—with Tony’s money and blessing—and instead of going for anything particularly flashy or new, they’ve got fairly simple, plain canvas tents set up, all identical.

Natasha finds some stones to outline where she plans to dig out a fire pit, instructing the rest of them to spread out and gather firewood. Steve goes out toward the river with their canteens, refilling what was used up on the journey out and dropping the tabs in that will purify the water. He then stands in front of the river for a while, listening to the sounds of nature with a smile.

He still loves the city, and he wouldn’t want to give up living in New York where he grew up—even if it’s changed drastically from when he was young. But he can also appreciate the raw beauty of a place that’s been untouched by mankind. And it’s nice to hear birds and the sound of the trees moving in the wind. There’s not a lot of that back at the Tower or anywhere Steve usually likes to go.

When he gets back to camp, Natasha has created a clear depression outlined in rocks to serve as a fire pit, dragging the largest stones she could find over to serve as makeshift chairs around the fire for them. Tony and Clint have a respectable pile of firewood, mostly smaller sticks but a decent number of larger pieces as well. 

Clint recruits Steve to drag over a gigantic downed log that he found a hundred feet or so from camp. The thing is huge, way larger than they need, but Clint is laughing and looks delighted by the find, so Steve indulges him with a smile. Looks like the trip is already doing something good for them.

He wishes the whole team could be here, but Bruce is halfway across the country right now, in the middle of a research project that he was recruited to by a university, and Tony was firm that this is an important opportunity for him and he shouldn’t be bothered unless it’s a true Avengers emergency. Thor is off the planet, which isn’t unusual, as he often leaves for months at a time. Still, Steve likes having him around.

It was hard enough to get the four of them to be able to come out. Steve leads the Avengers, so for him to call this a training exercise and demand time be made in his own schedule wasn’t hard. Likewise, persuading SHIELD to clear Clint and Natasha from any non-Avengers missions for a few days was fairly easy.

Trying to schedule Tony, however, was a nightmare. Steve knows, of course, that Tony has a lot on his plate, working as Iron Man, a consultant for SHIELD, and head of R&D for Stark Industries, but he’d never really appreciated the sheer amount of official things on Tony’s schedule before. No wonder he’s always skipping out on mission debriefs and non-essential SI meetings—at least as many as Fury and Pepper, respectively, will let him get away with—in order to get more time in the lab. 

Steve had to call no less than five different people just to make sure Tony’s schedule was clear for three straight days. Tony’s new secretary had to reschedule five different minor meetings, JARVIS another two, and Pepper had to change one with the SI board. Fury grudgingly agreed to change some deadlines for tech that Tony’s been working on, and Tony himself had to change his own schedule months in advance in order to push back an Iron Man appearance that he was adamant about making. He had at least seven active projects that would have to be put on hold. Steve sometimes wonders how he can possibly manage it all, genius or not.

It’s no secret that Tony can be efficient, organized, and a hell of a team player when he needs to be. The problem usually is that he doesn’t want to be, and he can also be incredibly contrary and downright irritating when he feels like it. He seems to take pleasure in winding Steve up, so he loves to act like he can’t get along with the team, even when Steve knows he works beautifully with the rest of them whenever the situation really calls for it.

After all the complaining he did, Steve fully expects Tony to intentionally be less than helpful around camp just to provoke the rest of them. He does it in a friendly way, even if sometimes he goes a bit too far. To Steve’s surprise, though, when he and Clint return with the big log, Tony and Natasha have created a sturdy structure for the fire and Tony is enthusiastically explaining the physics behind the perfect campfire.

Wanting this to be an authentic experience, Steve has brought along a small flint/magnesium bar and a knife to try to start the fire. Laughing at him for being “old-fashioned,” Clint also insisted on bringing matches, just in case, but they don’t need them. Tony takes the supplies out of Steve’s hands as soon as Steve pulls them out of his pocket. Before Steve can even think to say anything, much less to question whether Tony “I’ve never been camping in my life” Stark even knows what to do with it, Tony has sprung a beautiful spark into a ball of lightweight kindling with just a few strikes against the bar. He blows expertly on the kindling, moving it into the center of his careful structure, and nurses the flame until it catches enough of the small sticks in the center on fire to be sure that it will be self-sustaining, his attention entirely on his task.

When he’s done, Tony pulls back, looking at Steve, Clint, and Natasha’s shocked faces. He frowns for a moment, and something Steve’s not used to seeing flashes briefly in his eyes, but then it’s replaced by his usual attitude and he rolls his eyes. “What?” he says. “It’s all just physics. What I do can be applied to more than just tech, you know.”

“Yes sir, oh Master of the fire,” Clint says with an exaggerated bow, plopping himself down on a rock, and the strange tension of the moment vanishes.

They all make themselves comfortable around the fire and start talking as the daylight fades, exactly what Steve was hoping to get out of this trip. For everyone to get to know each other better, have fun together, and share some good experiences that aren’t life or death, for once. Light conversation about fire-making turns to a debate over the best techniques for cooking on an uneven heat, which reminds them all that they’re hungry, and Steve goes to retrieve the single cooking pot and cans of beans and vegetables that he brought along.

Clint laughs at the food, calling it “Boy Scout gourmet.” Steve lets Natasha handle the cooking—she won the debate over how to cook over a fire, easily beating out Clint, who’s a disaster even in a fully modernized kitchen—and Steve hands out bowls to everyone. They don’t talk as much for the next few minutes, busy eating, but there’s still some occasional conversation passing between them.

It’s only when he’s nearly done eating and looking around at all of them that Steve realizes Tony’s been extremely quiet ever since the food came out. He’s staring into the fire, and now that the sun has faded beyond the horizon and he’s being lit only by the flames, the lines in his face look more prominent than ever. His vaguely sick look doesn’t help the impression.

“Tony? You okay?” Steve asks gently, trying to test the waters, see if Tony is just drifting off like he sometimes does, mind full of equations and engineering and statistics.

Tony does seem to snap back to reality at the sound of Steve’s voice, looking over to him across the fire. “I’m fine,” he says, though it’s lacking some of his usual confidence and Steve frowns, wondering what could be bothering him.

“There’s more food if you want it,” Steve tries.

Tony glances over to the pot resting next to the fire and the sick look returns to his face for a moment. “No thanks.”

Clint tips his bowl up, knocking back the rest of his own food in one instead of using his spoon. “Come on,” he says as soon as he’s swallowed, “it might not be up to the standards of your personal chef, but this is way better than I usually get on recon missions when I have to be camped out somewhere. You should be grateful.”

Clint’s tone is light, clearly joking, but Tony doesn’t move or respond, still just staring into the fire. The flames shift over his face and it must be a trick of the light, because for a second, Steve could swear he looks unbearably haunted, like a shell of a man. Like the men Steve saw in the war a lifetime ago, men who watched their units get blown apart, who held friends in their arms as they breathed their last, who came back changed.

Clint frowns at Tony’s lack of response. There’s a few moments of silence and stillness, then Tony jerks into motion once more, like he’s snapping himself out of a trance. He reaches for his canteen of water and pours some into his bowl, swirling it around to clean it out.

Then, he does something odd. He starts to lift the bowl to his lips, like he’s going to drink the water now infused with the remains of his dinner. The thought is pretty unappealing, and perhaps Tony realizes what he’s doing, because a moment later he stops himself and smoothly dumps the contents of the bowl out on the ground next to him. Still, Steve can’t help but frown at the movement, wondering what could have made Tony almost do something like that seemingly on instinct.

Steve opens his mouth, ready to ask what’s up with Tony, but Tony gets there first. “I’m going to, um—sleep,” Tony says, glancing back at the tents set up around them.

“What, already?” Steve asks, frowning.

“Party pooper,” Clint tries, smiling, but once again, Tony doesn’t respond to the good-natured jab.

“Got up early the last few days,” Tony says, shrugging, then moves to his tent. “Have fun.”

It’s true, Steve knows, but he still frowns after Tony, worried about the uncharacteristic dullness in his voice and his expression. He gets the feeling something else is going on, that he’s missing something. The feeling only strengthens when he looks back at Clint and Natasha and sees them frowning at each other, having a silent conversation.

They hear rustling as Tony must change into sleep clothes over in his tent, then after a few minutes, the sounds slow down and disappear. Eventually, as Steve, Clint, and Natasha resume low conversations, Steve chalks Tony’s attitude up to exhaustion. Steve supposes he should be happy that Tony, who chronically has an insane sleep schedule, is finally getting some rest, but naturally it’s when Steve wants him awake for once. He would have liked to talk with Tony more around the fire.

Steve relaxes even more as the night goes on. The three of them talk, trading stories and joking. At one point, Steve drops out of the conversation to lie back on the ground, staring up at the multitude of stars above them. The sky is beautiful. Clint and Natasha join him after a few minutes, Nat pointing out constellations and Clint telling ridiculous made-up versions of the stories behind them with complete confidence, making Steve laugh.

The fire dies down between them, more coals than anything now. They do occasionally stoke it up, adding a few more sticks, but it’s getting late and all of them should probably head to bed soon. But they’re having fun, and Steve wants to stay out, watching the fire die down, feeling safe among friends. They play musical chairs—or rocks—a few times when the light breeze shifts around, making the smoke from the fire swirl directly toward one of them, then another.

The night is getting colder at Steve’s back. Even with his front warmed by the fire, the chill around them sends an involuntary shiver through Steve. He pushes away creeping memories, refusing to let them wreck his good time. He’s close to suggesting they all go to bed—it has to be long past midnight at this point—when there’s a rustling sound and movement from the tents behind them.

They all turn to look as Tony emerges, barefoot and wearing long sleep pants and a t-shirt. His eyes are open, but he looks less coordinated than usual, stumbling toward them a few steps before stopping, peering at the fire. He mumbles something that sounds like “Abu baka—” and then trails off into incomprehensible mutters.

Natasha laughs lightly. “Enjoy your nap?”

Tony mumbles something that sounds like it’s meant to be words, but Steve couldn’t for the life of him say which ones. It all comes out as one heavy, slurred sound. Tony peers around for a moment like he can’t figure out where all the trees came from, then takes another clumsy step toward where they’re sitting.

Clint’s eyes narrow as he looks at Tony, then his face spreads into a grin. “I think he’s sleepwalking.”

Steve can’t help but laugh a little at the thought. They’ve caught Tony sleepwalking around the Tower before—chronic insomnia and crazy working hours seem to be a mix that predisposes him to it—and though at first, Steve was cautious about it, they all quickly learned to just laugh off the incidents. The others warned Steve away from trying to wake Tony up, but they all found out soon enough that what they really need to do is keep Tony out of danger when it happens. They learned that the hard way, after Tony wandered into the kitchen muttering equations under his breath and somehow turned the toaster into an EMP bomb that fried every other appliance in the kitchen.

Usually, when it happens, Tony’s been on an inventing binge and that’s what he’s after in his sleep. A few times, he’s fallen asleep during team movie nights and then gotten up to wander the halls, looking for Disney characters or mob bosses or whatever the subject of the movie was. His sleepwalking episodes seem to be geared toward whatever he’s been doing that day, so now, Steve watches him with a smile, wondering what a day of hiking and camping is going to do for him, and hoping he doesn’t have to steer Tony away from wandering away from camp and falling into the river.

Tony mumbles something incomprehensible again, then looks between each of them and mumbles some more; this time, Steve catches the words “move” and “smoke.”

Clint chuckles. “What’s that, Tony?”

“Too smoky,” Tony says, and moves toward the fire.

“He can probably smell it from his tent,” Natasha says, smiling. Tony bends to pick up a long stick from the ground, moving forward to stick it into the fire, poking the remains of the logs around. Steve puts a hand out, ready to stop him if he tries to walk into the fire pit in his sleep or something, but he just jabs the logs until the fire flares up again and stops producing so much smoke. They all chuckle at his careful tending of the fire.

“That better?” Clint asks when Tony seems to be done, squinting blearily at his work.

“Keep it,” Tony says, and it sounds like a request to them. He mutters some more, then says, “Raza doesn’t like the smoke,” and turns to return to his tent.

The change in the atmosphere is immediately evident. The smiles slide off Clint and Natasha’s faces. Natasha tenses up, and Steve finds himself doing the same unconsciously. Clint looks stricken as he stares after Tony. “Jesus,” he says hoarsely.

Natasha’s lips thin into a grim line and she looks back to the fire, suddenly looking haunted. Clint buries his face in his hands once Tony has crawled back into his tent. Steve looks between them, tension raising the hairs on the back of his neck. “What’s going on?”

Clint shakes his head and pulls his hands away from his face. The miserable expression the movement uncovers doesn’t make Steve feel any better. Natasha sighs from Steve’s other side. “Raza,” she says. The name sounds vaguely familiar to Steve, he feels like he ought to be able to place it, but he can’t.

At his questioning look, Natasha continues. “One of the leaders of the Ten Rings, now deceased. Used to operate his terrorist cell in the deserts of Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan… where Tony was held captive. The three months that preceded him becoming Iron Man. Understanding dawns on Steve as he remembers where he’s heard the name before—in Tony’s file, at least what there was left of it once Tony was done hacking his way through SHIELD and erasing anything he didn’t want them privy to. “He’s the one who—?”

“Who Obadiah Stane paid to kill Tony, yes,” Natasha says, her voice hard and cold. “Once he realized who his target was, he abandoned the original plan and decided to take Tony hostage instead. Kept him in a cave in the desert for three months and tortured him until he agreed to build weapons for them. But instead of doing it, he built the first prototype of the Iron Man suit and fought his way out.”

That was a lot of information, and it leaves Steve reeling. He already knew the basics, of course. Everyone knows that Tony was held hostage in Afghanistan, and whatever happened there caused him to shut down weapons production and become Iron Man after he got home. But Steve was never told the details. Tony had erased them from his own SHIELD file, and Steve didn’t get a chance to learn a lot about him besides what was available on the news and the internet between when he woke up from the ice and when the Avengers came together. After that, Steve felt like any of his information about Tony should come from the man himself, but Tony never talks about Afghanistan.

SHIELD told Steve that Obadiah Stane, Howard’s old business partner, was selling their weapons to terrorists under the table for more profits, and that he and Tony had split over it. Stane later “disappeared” in an accident that Steve could tell was an obvious cover-up. He was never actually sure whether SHIELD killed Stane or Tony did.

He hesitates now, glancing back toward Tony’s tent. He still feels like it’s an invasion to ask Natasha to tell him about Tony, but it’s starting to seem like not knowing more about him is causing Steve to misstep as a team leader, and trying to force Tony to tell him about his past, particularly after this, will be next to impossible. “He was paid to kill Tony?” He asks it hesitantly, but he knows he can’t disguise his curiosity, not to Natasha.

Natasha frowns at him. “What do you know about what happened between Tony and Stane?”

“Tony erased most of his file,” Steve says immediately in response to her expression, feeling the need to defend his ignorance. “I just know that he was dealing under the table, and later he died. I didn’t know… that he tried to have Tony killed. I just knew he was Howard’s old partner.”

Clint gives the fire a nasty look, one Steve is glad isn’t aimed at him. “Stane was his godfather,” he says, and Steve recoils. He didn’t know that. “Tony was getting too close to finding out what he was doing, and Stane knew he’d never let it continue, so he tipped off the Ten Rings and paid to have his convoy attacked in Afghanistan. They were supposed to just kill Tony, but once they found out who he was, they took him instead. Wanted him to build weapons for them.”

Steve never knew that. Never. That’s horrible, he can’t imagine Tony being sold out like that by his godfather just for the sin of being too responsible. Steve knows that Tony used to have a reputation for being a drunk party boy, that he supposedly didn’t care what happened to his weapons, but of course he did. He only sold them to the American government, trying to protect the American people just like Howard, and Stane’s betrayal is all the proof anyone should need of that. Steve feels ashamed of himself for ever thinking, however briefly, that Tony might not have cared where his weapons went or who used them.

“Tony wasn’t supposed to escape and come home,” Natasha says, and her voice holds the same terrifying edge as Clint’s face, even while her own expression remains carefully blank. “So Stane had to pretend he was glad to see him. Problem was, Tony had seen the Ten Rings and their stockpiles of his weapons, and he came home determined to fix it. He shut down weapons manufacturing, he built an improved suit and he started going out, destroying the Stark weapons that were out there.”

“He was going to find out what Stane was doing, sooner or later,” Clint snarls, “so Stane went after him, legally first… he tried to shut him out of the company. But he got even greedier. Tony had created a miracle in that cave and Stane wanted it.”

“The suit,” Steve says, but Clint shakes his head.

“The arc reactor. Miniaturizing it was something no one else could do. The suit, someone else could copy, even if they couldn’t do quite as good a job as Tony. Stane did, actually, but that wasn’t his primary goal. No one Stane hired could figure out how to power something like that without needing something as big as the original reactor. It just wasn’t feasible. Stane got the idea from Raza, got what he needed to start building his own suit, and then he killed the bastard. He built a monster of a suit, planning for it to be a prototype for a new generation of weapons that he could sell to both sides and make a fortune. Maybe he even had ambitions beyond that, who knows. Either way, the problem was he couldn’t power what he’d built.”

Steve frowns. “So what happened?”

Clint finally looks up, looking haunted. It’s the same expression Tony wore earlier and it hurts something in Steve to see. “He attacked Tony at home. Paralyzed him and then took the reactor right out of his chest.”

Steve can’t help the sharp intake of breath at the words. As much as he evidently doesn’t know about Tony’s background, he knows even less about the arc reactor. What he does know doesn’t come from Tony, but from SHIELD: two or three brief sentences. The reactor keeps Tony alive; he’ll die in minutes without it. Don’t ever take it out of his chest or let anyone else do the same, for any reason. If, for any reason, it ever is out, priority number one is getting it back in.

This new information makes some pieces of the puzzle clearer. As something that keeps Tony alive, naturally he would be protective of it, but what Steve has observed has been paranoia, plain and simple. Tony notices when people are looking at it and he turns away, watching them suspiciously for minutes afterward, no matter how fleeting or curious a glance it was. When he’s startled or hurt, his first reaction is to bring an arm up to cover the reactor. And the one time Steve tried to ask about how it works, Tony paled so fast Steve was afraid he would pass out, snarled an insult that wasn’t quite strong enough to disguise his shaking voice, and practically ran from the room.

Seeing the look on Steve’s face, Natasha says, “He had a backup reactor, thankfully. But Stane got his and used it to power the suit he’d created. He tried to kill Tony for a third time—after he went after Pepper.”

Steve is shocked at that. “He went after Pepper? What for?” He knows Pepper wasn’t CEO back then, she was just Tony’s assistant. He can’t imagine why Stane would have gone for her.

Natasha grimaces. “She knew what he’d done. Tony asked her to retrieve some files from his office, proof of what Stane had been up to, and in the process she found out that he was the one who paid the Ten Rings to kill Tony. Until then, it was all about the business side of things, the fact that he’d been dealing under the table, but that was a lot more personal. She told Coulson everything she’d found out, and SHIELD was getting involved right when Stane attacked Tony and decided to go out in a blaze of glory.”

Steve shakes his head, trying to process everything he’s just learned. “I can’t imagine. Tony’s never said…”

“Tony doesn’t talk much about himself,” Natasha says simply, then smiles at Steve’s slightly incredulous look. “If you actually pay attention to what he says, you’ll see it’s true. He can boast about his brains or his accomplishments all day long, but he doesn’t tell you anything of real value about himself. It’s not just Howard he doesn’t like to talk about. And he hates showing any kind of weakness. Being blindsided and nearly killed by your godfather? That’s weakness. So is showing any signs of lingering trauma after being tortured by terrorists for months.”

Steve hesitates at that, almost not wanting to ask his next question. He would never have guessed Tony to have gone through something so awful, and yet, that’s a failing on his part, not Tony’s. He shouldn’t have made assumptions. “What did they—?”

Clint grimaces and ducks his head again. Natasha rests her elbows on her thighs, staring into the dying fire. “We don’t know. No one really does, except Tony himself. Anyone else who was in that cave with him is dead now. When he got out, he didn’t talk about most of it. We have no idea how he actually got the arc reactor implanted in his chest, and he won’t tell us. The only person he’s ever really said anything to is Rhodes, and even he doesn’t know everything. Still, there are some things we can guess at without having to be told.”

“Like what?”

Natasha gives Steve a steady look. “The Tower is one of the most luxurious buildings I’ve ever seen, state of the art. Tony designed entire floors for us. He’s got everything he could think of there.” Steve nods hesitantly, not sure where she’s going with this. “Haven’t you ever wondered why there’s no pool?”

No, he really hasn’t, but now that he thinks about it, now that Natasha proposed the question in this context, he can’t help but be sickened by the thought. When Steve remains silent, Clint asks, “Ever been up to his floor, used his bathroom?” Then, not waiting for an answer, “There’s no bathtub.” Steve closes his eyes, not wanting the image. Not wanting to think about what could have been done to Tony in that cave to make him want to avoid water.

“God,” Steve finally says. He can’t bring himself to be more articulate.

“And we brought him out here,” Clint says darkly, once more glaring at the coals like he might reignite them with just the ferocity of his gaze, “to sleep on the cold hard ground and light fires to keep warm and eat crappy food in a tin pot just like he did in that cave…”

“We didn’t think about it,” Natasha says firmly, clearly trying to pull Clint out of whatever dark place he’s going in his head. “We can—we should—apologize in the morning, but we weren’t trying to hurt him.”

Steve sits back. And to think, an hour ago he was thinking that this trip was the best thing to happen to the Avengers yet, a real bonding experience. Now he can’t wait for it to be over. “We’ll go back tomorrow. This was a terrible idea.”

Natasha gives him a pitying look. “It wasn’t a bad idea, Steve. You didn’t know. None of us thought about this. And Tony agreed to come out here.”

After they practically berated him into it, Steve thinks, but he concedes the point with a nod to Natasha. He appreciates her attempts to alleviate the guilt and blame, even if they’re not very successful. He sighs and rises to his feet, grabbing his canteen to rinse out his bowl and then heading back to his tent. “See you in the morning,” he says listlessly to the others, and hears them murmur agreements as they all retreat to their own tents for the night. 

He has a feeling he won’t be having good dreams tonight.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh so sorry for leaving this on chapter 1 for so long. I was down in another state for a month and a half, first on an away elective working in a hospital, then on vacation. Now I’m home and just got surgery, and while I’m still recovering from that, I have to start flying around the country for residency interviews. I just got back from my first one, which I had to do on crutches—not fun, but the interview itself was amazing. I’m excited, but also going to be crazy busy. I also posted another story for the Rhodey/Tony November bang, which some of you might have seen. I promise, I have at least ten of my usual salty stories planned and waiting to be written, and I’ll be contributing to my lovely Bitter Retribution and Tales from Tolsar series again soon.
> 
> I’m taking some tech timeline liberties here, since in this story Tony already has a version of his gauntlet watch but not the implants that he put in in IM3.

Tony wakes up uncomfortable. Which isn’t exactly strange for him, but this is a different discomfort than usual. He’s still hazy, half trapped in his bad dreams, alternating between flashes of snow outside of cold cave walls and a burning, endless desert.

Which, he realizes as he starts to wake up a little more, makes sense when it comes to his environment. His face, neck, and one shoulder are exposed to the air inside his small tent and absolutely freezing, while the rest of him, buried under the two thick blankets and the thermal sleeping bag he’d bought, is sweaty and burning hot.

He’s already miserable, and he spends a few moments wallowing in self-pity before pulling himself together. This is supposed to be a team bonding experience and a fun trip and as much as he wouldn’t want to admit it to Steve’s face, Steve was right yesterday. This could be more fun if he just embraces it.

Okay, so sitting around the fire as the air got colder, staring into the flames and thinking about Yinsen and everything he’s ever done wrong in his life wasn’t the most fun time. But he got up and hid in his tent and avoided the others all night, when he probably could have stayed up and at least tried to enjoy the night. Hell, he’s coming to trust these people with his life in the field, maybe he could stand to trust them with his emotions and his past.

He stays in his sleeping bag for a few minutes, dreading what he knows needs to come next. Eventually, though, the need to empty his bladder becomes more pressing than the need to stay in his warm cocoon. Besides, his legs and back are sweaty and becoming more uncomfortable by the minute.

Taking a deep breath, he unzips his sleeping bag and flings the top back, breathing out a quiet curse when the frigid air hits his whole body at once. Inside his small tent, thankfully, he doesn’t have to do more than reach back to get his day clothes out of his bag. Priority number one is a long-sleeved shirt, then socks. He debates changing into actual pants from his sleep pants, then decides he can leave that for later, not wanting to expose more skin to the cold early-morning air than necessary right now.

He leans forward to lace up his shoes and finally crawls out of the tent. He’s the first one up, which isn’t too surprising considering how early he’d gone to bed and the nightmares that woke him up. The sun is clearly just coming up—the whole forest around them has a foggy, gray look to it. There’s no sunbeams breaking through the foliage yet, but everything looks particularly green this early. Standing still, Tony can just barely hear the river nearby. He lets himself smile. Maybe there really is something to that “appreciating nature” stuff Steve was spouting yesterday.

He walks away, toward the distant trickling of the river, trying to keep quiet and not wake the others with his footsteps. When he’s a decent distance from the camp, he finds a place to relieve himself and then heads back.

Halfway there, he stops suddenly, senses on alert and listening hard, standing still like a spooked animal. He’s not sure what set it off, but there’s a sudden sense of something _wrong_ that’s too strong to ignore. He listens hard, but hears nothing except the river behind him and a few birds starting to call out. He tilts his head, trying to recall the past few seconds, wondering what set this all off. He can’t figure it out.

He sniffs the air, not sure what he thinks he might smell—a forest fire? Unlikely, it rained at least three days in the last week. Panic momentarily spiking, he scans the area around him, thinking of bears or big cats, but he sees nothing. He stays completely still for another minute, looking for movement at the edges of his vision, listening for the smallest sounds.

Nothing happens, and eventually, as the unsettling feeling fades, he assumes he panicked over what was most likely a squirrel rustling some fallen leaves or a bird calling out. He shakes his head at himself, thinking about how foolish he must look standing still and glancing around like a frightened deer, and has a moment to be glad none of his companions witnessed this little episode. Huffing at his own stupidity, he heads back to camp.

When he gets there, a face is looking out at him through the flap of the tent next to his, surrounded by a mess of red hair that still somehow looks stylish and elegantly ruffled rather than like the ridiculous bedhead he has no doubt he’s sporting.

Natasha’s not frowning at him, exactly, but something about her expression seems off. Upset maybe, although Tony has no idea why she would be. She’s looking at him like he’s the cause of her issues—or maybe he’s just overthinking, he can never read her very well, but it unsettles him either way—and he can practically feel himself becoming defensive. 

“What?” he says, and somewhere in the back of his head, he’s grateful that it didn’t come out quite as accusatory or hostile as it could have.

She moves out of her tent and stands up in front of him. She’s already gotten dressed, he notes, dressed for hiking and still somehow looking like a deadly assassin doing it. She tilts her head, scrutinizing him, and her expression changes. All at once, something clicks for Tony—pity, that’s what he sees in her expression. He crosses his arms in front of his chest even though he’s well aware that it’s an obvious tell and a stupid defense mechanism. She probably knows all of his tells, anyway. 

Whatever he did to make her look at him that way, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to hear the soft things she tries to say to him, how she pretends to understand, how she puts aside whatever far worse things she’s been through herself to try to be there for him. And he realizes distantly that whatever he told himself earlier about how he shouldn’t have run from the company last night was bullshit. He’s not at all ready to share with these people, not about his biggest failures, not the things that keep him up at night.

Dread settles into his stomach as he looks at her and wonders what the hell happened to make her look at him that way. Did he cry out in the middle of his nightmares last night? Was he too obvious when he stared into the fire, trying to hold back flashbacks of Afghanistan, then abandoned the group to hide in his tent? 

Oh god, do the others know too, is he going to have to endure pitying looks and attempts to get him to share and care from all three of them? Clint would probably avoid the subject entirely, or just offer a single, gruff attempt at comfort and then forget the whole thing. Natasha might persist for longer, trying to approach him from a soft, nonthreatening, friendly standpoint, and he can rebuff her with distractions. But Steve… if Steve knows whatever the hell Natasha knows now, he’s going to be unbearable.

She shifts her gaze away from his, looking honestly guilty for a moment, and he makes an effort to soften the scowl he knows he’s wearing now. She’s not trying to antagonize him, it’s not her fault he’s a goddamn emotional minefield. 

“Tony… when the others get up, we should… talk.” She says it quietly, softly, but Tony can feel himself becoming tense and defensive all over again. There’s a reason he avoids real interactions with people—he’s terrible at them.

“How about we don’t,” he snaps back, despite the inner voice cursing him for being such an ass for no reason.

Her eyes come back to him and he once again can’t read her expression. She opens her mouth to say something back to him, but then it happens again. Tony stills as the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and this time his reaction is justified when he sees the way Natasha has tensed up and started shifting into assassin spy mode.

It takes a second, and then he hears it—the slightest whine, mechanical in nature. Well disguised, and it could easily blend into the normal sounds of the forest if he wasn’t listening for it. Natasha’s eyes dart around and then fix on a point over his shoulder, and Tony whirls around, already raising his left hand, using the right to tap the sequence over the watch he wears that will turn it into a gauntlet. Thank god he always wears it these days, even to bed.

He doesn’t see anything at first, but then—_there_—the slightest movement behind a tree, at the wrong height for an animal and moving too fast and cutting too clean a path through the air for a bird. A flash of silver, and then it’s gone, too far away to see. Whatever it is, it’s small, fast, and he didn’t get a real look at it.

“What the hell was that?” he asks.

“Nothing good,” Natasha says, and he can hear the tension in her voice. There’s more movement behind him and Tony whips around instinctively, holding out his now-gauntleted hand, but it’s just Natasha moving to the two occupied tents in their little camp, slapping a hand on the canvas loudly. “Clint. Steve,” she says, and her tone is enough to wake anyone up and put them on alert. “Get up. _Now_.”

There’s immediate shuffling and movement from both tents. “What’s happening?” comes from Steve’s, muffled, but Natasha doesn’t answer.

Clint emerges first, pulling on a jacket, boots already laced up, expression grim. He looks between Tony and Natasha expectantly and she explains without needing to be asked. “Saw something just now. Small, fast, artificial, hovering about six feet above ground. Watching us, I assume. Could just be a scout, could be we wandered into someone’s territory. Could be someone looking for us specifically.” Clint’s frown becomes more severe at that last line and Tony clenches the fist that isn’t covered in metal. He should start carrying the whole damn suit with him everywhere he goes.

Steve practically leaps out of his tent then, just a minute behind Clint. “Weapons?” Natasha asks, addressing the group, before Steve can say anything.

Steve shakes his head and Natasha grimaces. “I have three knives, one of which has a detachable handle with a poison dart in it,” she says. “Depending on what we’re up against, could be useful, could be completely useless.”

“One knife,” Clint says, looking supremely unhappy with that fact, and then they all look to Tony.

Tony holds up the gauntlet. “Just this. Has enough power in it for probably two or three decent repulsor shots. It’s also got a self-destruct feature powerful enough to take down something medium-sized, and an emergency homing beacon.”

“We should start heading for the cars,” Steve says. 

Tony eyes the trees around them, knowing it’s at least an hour back to where they left the vehicles, even if they’re rushing rather than strolling through the woods like they did on the way here. Then Clint, shaking his head, brings up yet another problem. “What’s the chance whoever this is already found the cars?”

“That depends on whether they’re looking for us, or they just happened to find us,” Natasha says.

Tony can practically see Steve calculating, then he turns to Tony. “You activate that emergency beacon, how long before someone gets here?”

“JARVIS will respond immediately. First thing he’ll do is home in on the location where the beacon was set off. He’ll contact SHIELD immediately—rest is up to them, really. If we stay put, probably less than two hours before someone finds us. But if we have to move, it’ll be harder.”

“So should we wait?” Clint asks, but Tony shakes his head.

“Even if we have to move, it’ll still put out a signal that JARVIS can track as we go. The problem is if I have to use it for anything else. I can use it as a repulsor, but that runs the risk of draining the power too much to continue sending out a signal. And if I have to use the self-destruct, well, that should be obvious.” The others grimace at that.

Tony nods to himself, reaching a decision. “Either way, the sooner we let them know we might be in trouble, the sooner someone gets here to start looking for us. I should activate it now.” He looks to Steve just long enough to get a nod of confirmation, then presses the sequence on the back of the gauntlet that will activate the emergency signal. A tiny red light on the back of the hand goes on, and Tony wishes fervently that he had his phone, at least, to talk to JARVIS and tell him the situation.

He wishes he had a whole suit, actually. Hell, he wishes they’d just stayed home and done some trust fall exercises or whatever for team bonding, instead of hiking out into the woods and immediately getting themselves into trouble.

Just as he’s looking up to tell the others that help should be on the way, trouble arrives. It starts as a distant whine—Steve’s head whips up to look around first, enhanced senses picking up the sound a few seconds before the rest of them—that quickly grows louder. 

Tony takes about five seconds to place the sound, which is two seconds too long. He sees Steve’s eyes widen, and there’s a blur at the edge of his vision as Nat starts moving, but he hasn’t moved yet by second number four. By second number five, before his brain can process and make him move, Steve is already grabbing his arm, yanking him bodily away from the clearing. 

At second number six, Steve’s shouted “MOVE!” is drowned out by heavy gunfire. Some kind of high-tech airship, a sleeker version of SHIELD’s quinjets, descends into the clearing smoothly in a matter of seconds and shreds their little campsite.

Tony is already in the trees, running with Steve’s heavy breaths at his back, Steve’s hand on his back urging him forward. He has no idea where Nat and Clint are, just knows that they took off before the bullets started raining down, and why the hell didn’t they bring communicators out here? 

Right, because it was supposed to just be a camping trip in the woods, and because except for maybe Tony himself, they’re all capable of easily finding their way out if they were to simply get lost in the woods, without any armed people after them. Of course, the rest of them would expect Tony could too, even with no experience being a spy or in the army or out in the woods as a damn Boy Scout. His resourcefulness is legendary.

The whine follows them. Tony hears the airship above the trees, tracking them. The trees are still thin enough here that they can obviously be seen, but they’re getting thicker. Of course, it comes with the problem of thicker branches and brambles on the ground, too, and more obstacles to their panicked flight. Steve can probably barrel through just about anything, but Tony has to watch where he runs.

He’s pretty much just following Steve’s direction, despite being slightly in front. Probably Steve’s way of making sure he doesn’t lose Tony, but Tony has no extra time or attention to be devoting to analyzing that right now. They occasionally separate for seconds at a time, but Steve’s hand always returns, there at his back, guiding him to turn with the slightest pressure even as they sprint through the forest.

It’s always been like that; they trust each other just fine in the field and they work amazingly well together, considering all of the sniping and bullshit they have going on off of it. To Tony, it’s mostly just teasing, but he’s never quite sure if that’s how Steve sees it. Tony’s good at pushing boundaries to the point that people break and get sick of him, or insulted by him, and he does it often. He’s never been good at knowing when to stop.

Nevertheless, he trusts whatever path Steve has in his head as he pushed them to run. And likewise, he trusts that Steve will follow his lead when he hears the sound of the engines move in front of them and knows what’s coming. Without a word, he throws himself sideways between two wide trees, trusting that Steve will be right behind him.

The sharp sound of more gunfire, cutting through where they were running heartbeats ago, is loud enough even to be heard over the crunching and pounding in Tony’s ears as he rolls through the underbrush, smashing his shoulder on something hard and feeling a sharp stick leave a hot trail of pain as it scrapes across one side of his face. 

He comes up smoothly out of the roll, but has to throw himself into another one immediately when he spots the ship ahead and turning toward them. It’s taken advantage of a gap in the trees to descend down to where it can see them. From the brief glimpse Tony gets, it doesn’t have enough maneuvering room to make a full turn, but they’re still in the danger zone.

There’s a mechanical sound and then everything is lost once again in gunfire. Heedless of the pains and just hoping desperately that there’s no more obstacles in his way, Tony keeps rolling sideways, bashing various body parts but quickly clearing himself from the path of the gunship.

He finishes the last roll and comes up into a crouch in the second’s pause between sets of machine gun rounds. He hears a crashing next to him and can’t spare even a moment to be relieved that Steve followed his lead and has also moved out of range. Of course, whoever is inside the ship could open a window and fire at them using a handgun, with none of the restrictions that the ship’s guns have, and Tony is already flicking his wrist in the way that will power up the gauntlet he’s wearing, bringing it up as he rolls into his crouch.

He’ll only get one, maybe two shots at this. The ship’s design is foreign to him, but his repulsor blasts, even weaker ones from the single gauntlet like this, should be enough to blast through the glass at the front, even if it’s bulletproof. He could target the engines and try to bring the thing down, but it would be a harder hit and then they might still have to deal with one or more armed and angry people inside, coming out to fight them.

Instead, he takes aim at the bottom center of the darkened glass dome at the front of the ship—where he knows the pilot’s controls should be. There’s a second’s delay as his repulsor whines, powering up, and then he’s thrown backwards by the force of the blast, no full suit to absorb any of the impact.

He expects to hit the ground hard, just hoping that his head doesn’t impact a tree or a rock. But instead, he’s caught by warm, firm arms. Steve, behind him, just pulling himself out of his own roll away from the gunfire from the ship.

Steve hauls him to his feet in one smooth motion and Tony looks back at the ship in time to see it rise sharply and then drop, out of control. There’s a charred hole in the dome at the front and a fire sparking from within, which Tony only gets a momentary glimpse at before the whole craft is turning, tilting sideways, and slams into a tree.

There’s no dramatic explosion like in the movies, but the propeller at the back shreds itself on the tree it impacts—and sends pieces of bark and wood flying in every direction, causing Steve and Tony to duck with their hands above their heads to avoid being impaled by debris—and then there’s an earth-shaking crash as the whole thing hits the ground just yards from them.

Tony stands again cautiously, looking to the crashed ship, the hand with the repulsor still held out towards it. He doesn’t know how many occupants it might have had; it could have been just the pilot, or there could be five or ten goons crammed in there, waiting to come out and swarm them. The craft landed cockpit down, and odds are anyone sitting in the front is now dead, or close to it.

“Do you recognize it?” Steve’s voice says behind him, and Tony takes the opportunity to half turn, trying to keep one eye on the ship while he appraises Steve next to him. Steve’s covered in dirt and leaves from rolling around on the ground—Tony probably looks the same—but other than a few shallow cuts oozing blood, he looks unharmed. 

Looking back to the ship, he shakes his head. “No. No idea who the hell they are, or what they want with us, but I think we can safely say that was more than just random stumbling on someone’s territory. That was ‘pursue and destroy,’ and they had some serious firepower to back it up.”

Steve frowns at the remains of the ship. Tony still doesn’t lower the gauntlet, but it’s now been close to a minute and no one has emerged from the wreckage. It’s possible it was just one pilot. “Wonder where the others got to,” Tony says.

“They went in opposite directions, but I’m willing to bet they’ll find each other quickly,” Steve says. Tony nods his agreement and turns to say something else, but then he’s stopped for the third time by an overwhelming feeling of something wrong.

A moment later, just a breath, and another whine comes out of nowhere, growing louder in less than a second. There’s a second one.

“Son of a bitch!” Tony has just enough time to shout out. He gets one glimpse of Steve’s wide eyes, and then Steve’s hand is on his chest, shoving him backwards.

It’s not graceful. This time, Tony doesn’t get to push his momentum into a roll. He stumbles, trips, and then hits the ground hard on his back, knocking the wind out of him, distracting him for precious seconds. While he’s trying to get enough breath back to move and convince his arm to lift up and point at the danger, the world around him is once more drowned out by the sound of gunfire, closer this time than any of the previous ones.

There’s a shout, in a familiar voice, and it’s not triumph. It’s pain, and the jolt of adrenaline pushes Tony to move, scrambling up and throwing himself behind the cover of another tree. He gets a glimpse of another, identical airship, descending over the wreckage of the first. Now that the first one has destroyed one of the trees in its way, it has even more room to maneuver.

What he can’t see is Steve. Steve, who used precious seconds to shove Tony out of the way when they heard the incoming ship, and then shouted out in pain a moment later when they were shot at. Fuck. If Steve is dead now, self-sacrificing idiot, it will be Tony’s fault and Tony is _not_ going to deal with that.

He pushes off from the tree he’s using to hide and sprints for the cover of the next one. He tries to aim the repulsor at the new ship as he goes, but he’s running too fast and the target is moving. He knows he only has one good blast left in the thing, and he can’t afford to miss. 

At least he can serve as a distraction. The ship turns to follow him, guns blazing, and bullets pepper a trail behind Tony as he runs for the cover of a thick stand of trees nearby. He dives behind them just in time, practically feeling the heat of the bullets, and he hears the whines as the ship moves up and down in its limited space between the trees, annoyed with his hiding.

He has to go back for Steve. He hasn’t heard any more movement from back there, and Steve could be dead, but Tony can’t just run away and not look back. Fuck. But his first priority needs to be getting the ship away from Steve. He gulps in a breath and once more hurls himself out from behind the trees and sprints to the next cover.

He’s heading in a straight line, and the gunship is stuck in one place. At first, it was turning to follow him, but now he’s headed off in a tangential path, and sooner or later the angle will be shallow enough that it can shoot at him anyway. By that time, he should be far enough away that it can’t hit him, but actually getting away from the thing and luring it away from where Steve went down are two different problems. He needs to appear an enticing enough target to get it to leave the clearing and head back up above the trees to go after him.

He runs back and forth, zigzagging through the woods several more times, trying to do just that. He scratches his face on several more twigs and gunfire follows him the whole way. There’s a heart-stopping moment when he trips just before diving into cover and thinks that’s it, but he thankfully completes a painful stumble and slide in the slimy muck of fallen leaves and damp ground that puts him behind the large boulder just milliseconds before bullets impact the ground where his legs were moments ago.

Finally, he moves one last time even farther from the ship, and he gets his wish; the ship rises up above the trees to follow him. He turns and runs, this time in a mostly straight line. The only thought in his head is luring the ship away from Steve. Hopefully he can find another tight spot like the previous clearing and tempt the ship down below the tree line, getting another clear shot like the last one.

He’s so focused on continuing forward that he doesn’t realize until too late where he’s been heading. Running through the woods, with his own heavy breathing in his ears and the whine of the gunship above him, he hasn’t been focusing on the other sounds around him, and before he realizes his mistake, he’s coming up on the river, curving ahead of him.

The river, with its wide, clear banks. A long strip of clear land for the gunship to descend in, and it does, coming down directly in front of him even as he skids to a halt and desperately tries to think of a plan. The trees thin near the river, and even the few that could potentially provide cover won’t do so for long, not when the gunship has a clear view of him and an easy shot at him.

He’s already readying himself to dive sideways, hoping he can at least get behind a tree for long enough to ready his last repulsor shot before he’s riddled with bullets, when his brain registers more movement from the corner of his eye.

It all happens in less than three seconds. The gunship is still descending in front of him, lining up a shot on Tony where he stands, practically unprotected. Tony is simultaneously readying himself to dive to the left and also curling his hand in a move to activate the gauntlet again, hoping to fire one last time as he goes out. The movement along the river bank to his right comes closer, resolving into a figure that sprints forward, directly toward the ship, even as the ship’s guns power up again.

Before Tony’s conscious mind can even process that it’s Natasha, or what she’s doing, his subconscious is already making calculations, taking over his body. It calculates her trajectory, and instead of throwing himself to the left, as Natasha flings herself bodily onto the glass front of the gunship, he throws himself down to his right, onto the ground.

He could swear he feels bullets tear holes in the legs of his pants, but they don’t hit him. This roll isn’t as graceful as the first, but Tony does manage to get himself back up and look at the ship quickly. The impact of Natasha’s body landing on the delicate craft didn’t really throw it off that much, but the surprise of her sudden appearance has obviously affected the pilot, because the craft has swerved several yards off to the side, the guns have stopped, and Nat is hanging on with one hand, thrusting what must be one of her knives into some kind of panel to the side of the pilot’s seat with the other.

Tony is up, readying his gauntlet once more, but he’s not sure what he’s going to do with it. He can’t risk hitting Natasha. His mind is going a mile a minute and he startles violently when he feels a touch on his arm.

He whirls around, half expecting Steve and half expecting some villain to have a gun in his face, but it’s neither. It’s Clint, grabbing his arm and pulling him back behind the cover of the trees once more. Tony wants to stay and help Natasha, but he immediately understands that by pulling Tony away from the fight with the second ship, Clint is trusting her to take care of it, and Tony should trust that too.

“Where’s Steve?” Clint shouts over the renewed sound of gunfire from the ship behind them.

Tony’s already turning, running back the way he came. “He got hit when the second ship came down—I was trying to get it away from him!” He shouts it as he runs, not slowing down to make sure Clint heard him.

He hears Clint swear behind him, but he’s already tuning it out. Now that Natasha is taking care of the second ship and Clint is here, all of Tony’s focus has once again gone back to Steve. Who could be lying dead or dying in the woods, and Tony left him. For good reason, but Tony’s breath still hitches at the thought.

Then it explodes out of him in relief when they round the smoking wreckage of the first gunship and see Steve on his feet, leaning heavily against a tree. When he sees them, he turns and falls into a fighting stance that’s somewhat ruined by how unsteady he looks, before obviously recognizing them and breathing out his own sigh of relief.

Close now, Tony immediately bends to look at his side, where his gray shirt is stained dark and wet with blood. Tony reaches to pull the shirt away from his side, already hissing in sympathy and feeling guilty for the wound, but Steve pushes his hand away.

“Not there,” Steve says, voice tight with discomfort as Clint gets the arm on Steve’s good side around his shoulders to support him. “Got hit in the arm. It’s fine, it’s just a graze.”

Tony blinks, then reaches for Steve’s arm. He sees it immediately; a graze, just like he said, already forming a scabbing crust thanks to super soldier healing. It clearly bled a lot, all over his shirt and pants, but Steve recovers as quickly from blood loss as he does from the actual wounds. 

Tony narrows his eyes, then, looking up to where Steve is now leaning against Clint for support. “Then what’s wrong?”

Steve’s eyes flick away, and for a second, he almost looks embarrassed. “Went down when I got hit and I landed on a rock. Slammed my back into it. My legs went totally numb for a few minutes.” He must see Tony’s alarmed look, because he hastens to add, “Feeling’s already coming back, just a little wobbly still. I’ll be fine.”

Tony stands with a grim nod and takes Steve’s other arm, trying not to be too rough to the wound as he puts it over his own shoulders. He opens his mouth to make some probably ill-timed and borderline insulting quip, unable to stand the tension of Steve having been hurt because of him and the sudden relief of finding out he’s more or less fine, but he’s saved from himself when there’s another loud crash somewhere nearby.

Steve jerks, but Tony glances across to Clint, who’s grinning. “That would be Nat, taking care of the target.”

“Impressive,” Steve says, and Tony nods in silent agreement. He’s probably reckless enough to throw himself onto a gunship to save a teammate, but he doubts he could actually take it down afterward. His move would be more of the self-sacrificing variety, which Steve has tried his best to enforce a strict ban on since New York and aliens in a wormhole and wow, don’t think about that now—

Thankfully, he’s pulled out of his thoughts before they can spiral by Natasha running back through the woods toward them, a tear in one of her sleeves and something black streaked across her face but thankfully uninjured. She and Clint exchange nods, probably a whole conversation contained within the gestures.

“Any info on who’s after us?” Tony asks before anyone else can question her.

She shakes her head, lips pressed together in a subtle expression of frustration he’s come to recognize. “Nothing. Ship had one pilot only, flying it and running the guns. Wearing black tactical gear, no logos or anything, nothing custom. High-end stuff, but nothing unique. I don’t recognize the design of the ship, and I had to destroy the computer onboard to take it down, so we’re not getting anything out of that.”

Steve pulls his arm off Tony’s shoulders, already steadier on his feet, taking charge once more. “Well, whoever they are, priority number one is getting away from them.”

“If they’re this well connected, with resources like this, it’s safe to assume they’ve already got someone back at the cars,” Natasha says. “Our best bet is probably to head away from them and hope SHIELD comes to pick us up and takes care of any stragglers that are still trying to track us.”

“We should move, then,” Steve says, pulling his other arm away from Clint and standing tall on his own feet. “The more distance we put between them and us, the better off we should be.” He turns to Tony. “SHIELD can still track you?”

Tony holds up his gauntlet, looking at it critically. “Yeah, it’s still sending out a signal. Problem is, if SHIELD can track it, guys with tech like this probably can too. It’s pretty hack-proof, but there’s nothing I can do about the fact that it’s an electronic signal. If we were in a crowded city, it would just blend in with everything else. But out here? There’s no disguising tech, and I think whoever’s after us can probably assume we’re the only ones out in the middle of the woods giving off any kind of signal.”

“So they could be tracking us as we move, is what you’re saying,” Steve says unhappily.

Tony nods. “And they could be bringing backup.”

“So should we just leave it here?” Clint asks. “Can you, I don’t know, send a message to SHIELD telling them which way we’re going and just leave it so the bastards can’t track us?”

Tony shakes his head, mind already filing away a new project to solve this problem. “It’s not that advanced, can’t send messages, just the pre-made distress signal. I either keep it or leave it, but that’s it. Either everyone can maybe track us, or no one can.”

Steve hums thoughtfully. “But there’s a chance they’re not tracking us with it.”

“Low chance, I’d say. It would be stupid not to. But yeah, I guess there’s a chance.”

“And there is a chance we took care of the advance guard, or whoever that was. It might take a while for any more of them to find us,” Natasha adds.

Steve nods. “Let’s keep it with us for now. If we decide it’s too much of a risk later, we can leave it.”

Tony shrugs. He’d just as soon leave it as take it with him, but whatever they want to do, he’s just happy to have his teammates with him. He wouldn’t want to be alone out here, possibly being tracked by bad guys with a hell of a lot more firepower than he has at the moment.

They start moving again, crossing the river and then moving parallel to it for a mile or so, hidden behind the tree line but still within sight of the water. They move quickly, adrenaline still pumping from the attack, glancing around at every little noise.

“We should be somewhere near the edge of one of the inland lakes,” Clint suddenly says after they’ve walked in silence for a while. “We don’t want to get stuck moving into some peninsula that just sticks out into a waterway. We could get cornered.”

“Well, let me just get out the compass and check,” Tony says, ignoring the look Steve gives him at the sarcastic tone.

“Oh, shut up,” Clint says, rolling his eyes. “Just give me a second.”

He turns, scans the forest around them, and apparently selects an appropriate tree. In seconds, he’s scaling it, and Tony can’t help but be impressed, not that he’d say that to Clint’s face. 

“I can see where the river widens ahead,” Clint calls down once he’s up near the top of the tree. “We should cross it soon and then keep heading northeast; we’ll follow the edge of the water for a while and then it’ll curve away from us and we’ll be heading inland.”

“No way he can see all that from up there,” Tony grumbles, and Natasha chuckles.

“He looked at the maps before we came out, obviously. He’s got a good memory for terrain and landmarks. He’s just getting his bearings up there.”

Tony snorts. He opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Clint shouts from above.

“Oh, shit. Guys—!”

His shout is cut off as he ducks below the top of the tree, pulling his head back into the branches, but Tony knows what’s happening. Another one of them.

Obviously the others know it too, because they tense, preparing to move. “Get further in!” Steve shouts. He and Nat immediately move for the thicker trees behind them, away from the river, but Tony hesitates for just a second, eyes on Clint up in the tree.

“He can handle himself—go!” Nat’s voice shouts in his ear, her nails digging into his arm as she grabs him and drags him along behind her.

He’d retracted his gauntlet after they started walking, but now he activates it again. It’s got one good repulsor shot left in it, but he has to aim it. He should get his chance when the ship lowers itself down along the river, turning to find them in the trees.

But it doesn’t. The familiar whining and whirring grows louder, and then there’s a soft sound over the top of the guns as the bullets impact leaves in the top of the tree Clint was just occupying.

“Fuck!” Tony says, not bothering to keep his voice down. If the ship is staying above the tree line… The branches above him shake as Clint leaps from tree to tree, hopefully looking for a way down. He could just jump, but it’s at least thirty feet to the ground and a broken leg could be a death sentence out here, when they’re being hunted.

That, or he’s determined not to bring the gunfire down on his companions on the ground. Tony could smack him if that’s the case. Eventually, he’s going to run out of room to maneuver up there in the trees, or the gunship’s sweeps are going to catch him.

The chance comes within seconds, and Tony could thank every deity he doesn’t believe in for his quick processing. He already has his hand on the gauntlet, preparing the repulsor blast, when he hears the whine of the gunship move. He’s pressed behind a tree maybe ten yards from where the forest gives way to the riverbank, and the ship is moving down into the space just behind him. Aiming up into the trees to get at Clint.

That, or giving up on Clint and trying to shoot the rest of them, but Tony can tell from the sound and the way that air is being displaced that it’s tilted back, tail toward the ground and nose in the air to point the guns up into the trees. Tony has about four seconds before it lowers completely and blasts Clint’s tree and Clint along with it, and another three before it can turn back to shoot him on the ground.

He’s already running, dashing between trees and straight toward it. He sees the bottom of the ship as it descends. Three seconds left in the descent. It will take two more for him to be clear of the trees, and at least two to aim—that’s one too many. That’s a dead archer. 

Instead, Tony’s hand is on the gauntlet as he runs, detaching it from his arm, flipping open the tiny panel and pressing in the switch that will cause it to self-destruct. The blast will be powerful—there won’t be a lot of time to get out of the way. Two seconds to charge, and now the ship is coming down in front of him. Spotting him as he emerges from between the trees, ignoring the shouts from above and behind him as he puts himself squarely in the line of fire.

The ship is moving, tilting down toward him, a new target presented. The guns are whirring to life once more, but it doesn’t matter. Tony is already hurling the charged gauntlet. He’s fifteen feet from the airborne ship; there’s no way he can miss, and it can’t move in time. He doesn’t pause to see whether it connects—he knows it will. Instead, he’s turning again, diving back behind a tree one last time in an attempt to protect himself from the explosion.

He hits the ground hard, chest first, at the moment of the explosion, and he’s so consumed by the pain as the reactor is jarred violently that he misses the sound of it. He does feel the heat, a moment later, and then as his mind—if not his diaphragm—recovers from its temporary paralysis, he feels the ground shake beneath him several seconds later as the gunship crashes to the ground.

By the time he manages to gasp in a breath around the pain in his chest, there are voices close to his head and hands on his back and his arms. They pull him up, and his head isn’t ready to be up, but it’s definitely nice not to be facedown in the leaves, that he can admit.

“—ark. Tony! Are you okay?” That’s Steve, trying to peer into Tony’s face. Tony blinks rapidly, sucking in air and then coughing as the inhalation brings hot, dusty, sooty air from the nearby explosion and crash into his lungs. He spends a moment coughing it out, grimacing at the pain in his chest. 

When he finally recovers from his fit, he twists, ignoring the concerned stares of the others to look back around the edge of the tree. He smiles, satisfied, at the blackened wreckage of the third gunship, crashed next to the river.

“Nice job,” Clint says from next to him. “Could have used a little warning.”

“Sorry, Tarzan,” Tony grins, a little giddy with the success of his plan, “no time. But you’re welcome, for saving your ass.”

“Yeah, saved your ass first,” Clint says with a smile, getting to his feet and offering a hand to pull Tony up. Tony takes it, waving off Clint’s concerned gaze—and Steve’s, over his shoulder—when he grimaces again and rubs over his sore chest. 

“Landed on the reactor,” he says shortly, trying to warn them away from asking more with his tone. “It’s fine.”

To further discourage them from asking questions, he moves stiffly over to the wreckage, looking down at it. He can see the charred, gaping hole where the gauntlet must have hit the front of the ship and exploded. It was enough to bring down the whole thing, as Tony had predicted, particularly with Natasha’s info that each ship only had one pilot controlling everything.

He feels Steve walk up at his back. “Well, that solves the problem of them potentially tracking us,” Tony says before Steve can speak. He wiggles his now bare left hand for emphasis. 

“Good,” Nat announces as she comes up behind them. “I don’t know if that’s what brought this one down on us, but it seems likely.”

“Course, now SHIELD can’t find us either,” Clint adds.

“They’ll start a search, and we can bet they have more resources than whoever these guys are,” Steve says surely. Always the commanding and confident leader. “They’ll find us.”

“In the meantime, we should start moving again,” Nat says. “Who knows how long it’ll take for these people to send someone else out now that we crashed this thing.”

They all murmur an agreement and set off, none of them eager to hang around and repeat any of the experiences with the gunships, particularly now that Natasha has used up her poison dart and lost one of her knives, and Tony’s gauntlet is gone.

They start trekking again, and at first, Tony is still energized by the adrenaline of the earlier fights, and high on the success of bringing down the ships and working well with his team. But all of that wears off after maybe an hour of walking. First, it’s along the river, like Clint said, but with a few detours into and out of the woods, to help throw off anyone who might potentially be trying to track their progress. 

After about an hour, they move away from the rapidly widening river and trek inland again, into the thick of the forest. They’re not carrying packs this time, but there’s none of the jokes or the lighthearted attitude they had coming into the woods yesterday. They’ve been attacked, they’re lucky to be all in one piece, and now they’re unarmed and purposely moving farther from their vehicles and from civilization with the hope that their allies find them before their enemies do.

Eventually, Tony gets bored. It’s inevitable, of course; except when he’s in an engineering trance, he can almost never focus on one activity for more than maybe an hour, and he constantly needs both physical and mental engagement. When they’re walking through mile after mile of boring woods, there’s not much for him to do.

He distracts himself for quite a while with engineering projects in his head, but there’s a limit to all of them, only so much he can do without a tablet to project figures or any place to write things down, test out simulations, or, of course, actually build anything. Still, he develops some theories, starts a few new projects, and discards some others. He manages to distract himself mentally pretty well.

Physically is another thing—his hands like to be doing something. Walking is at least something of an outlet for his restless energy, but after a few hours, he starts to notice that there’s another problem with the walking-and-thinking method.

His feet are really starting to hurt. He’s wearing proper hiking boots, top of the line, he bought them just for this trip, but they’re not exactly broken in. He’s not a hiker. He’s not a camper, or an outdoorsman by any stretch of the imagination.

His hands are an engineer’s—rough, calloused, used to working hard. His body is toned, not the deadly weapon Natasha’s is or the full-on brick shithouse Steve is, but he can lift twice his weight if he really tries. He spends his days fixing the armor, hauling around and shaping large pieces of metal. He’s not weak by any means.

But his feet, he can admit, are as soft as some people assume the rest of him is. He fights in the armor, flying instead of running around on the ground. He trains outside of the armor, but not to the extent the others do. He doesn’t go on runs with Steve, finding running to be pointless and boring and hard on his knees. He prefers weightlifting or swimming. He hasn’t marched in war, or spent years climbing obstacle courses or trekking through the Siberian tundra or whatever the hell the spies have done.

He hates admitting weakness of any kind. This usually isn’t a problem. It’s not like he couldn’t handle the walk out to where they made their campsite yesterday. But running through the woods today, followed now by hours of hiking—with uncounted more hours ahead—is a dreadful prospect. 

He can already feel the raw skin at the backs of his heels and the sides of his toes. He doesn’t think it’s to the point of bleeding yet, but after a couple more hours it probably will be. And now that he’s noticed it, he can’t stop noticing it. Even as he tries to forget about it and distract himself with more mental coding and engineering, it’s still there, the physical discomfort always present below everything else.

Despite his reputation for complaining about the smallest things, he’s not going to complain about this. It’s not just a matter of not appearing weak in front of his teammates, who undoubtedly aren’t struggling with the same problem, though that’s definitely a part of it. He also can’t afford to be slowing them down. He doesn’t think they’d leave him behind if he started slowing down to the point of being nearly unable to walk. On the contrary, they’d probably insist on carrying him, or stopping because of him, and he can’t do that. He can’t cause another person he cares about to get killed helping him because he’s not strong enough to prevent it, not fast enough.

The other problem pushing at the back of his mind is the cold. By the time the pain in his feet is so bad that he can barely focus on any of his mental projects, the sun has started to sink low enough that the air is rapidly cooling. While the sun was up, even in the shade of the trees, it was decently warm. Continuous movement made it even warmer, to the point that he was nearly sweating for a short while.

But now, even walking isn’t enough to ward off the chill that’s descending on them. Last night was tolerable, in his tent with his thermal sleeping bag and a couple of extra blankets piled on top of it. He left all of that behind at the campsite when they were attacked.

He’s supremely thankful that he put on his long-sleeved shirt when he got up and went out this morning. It’s not going to be enough tonight, but it’s better than the thin t-shirt he probably would have had on if the attack had come a little later in the day. As the sun goes out, he tries to tell himself that, over and over, repeating how lucky he is to at least have something decent on.

He trades hurts. Eventually, as it becomes colder and darker, the endless forest around them starts to blur together, and the agony in his feet becomes numbness when the cold gets to them. Which is really not a good thing, but now he’s too focused on the rising agony in his chest.

It _hurts_. His feet hurt before, yeah, and walking sucked, but he could walk along in a daze without having to put too much conscious effort into it. Now the cold is settling into the reactor in his chest and seeping out into his ribs, his lungs, his heart.

It’s not actually in his heart, that would be deadly for him. But it’s definitely on the surface and deeper than it should be thanks to the reactor, and it’s making his bones ache. Every breath, pulling on his ribs, is torture. He tries taking shorter, shallower breaths, but all that does is make him dizzy, so he resigns himself to trying to breathe normally.

There’s a fear at the back of his mind, too, about what he knows could happen to him because of the cold. It can’t really freeze the blood in his veins, but it can certainly slow it, and promote clotting, and both of those things are very bad for him. 

He knows he’s riddled with health problems that should kill him—that _would_ kill most people. He’s survived through a combination of luck, sheer stubborn will, and of course obscene amounts of money. He can pay the best doctors in the world to take risks with him or to give him controversial treatments or just give their opinions on his unique situation.

Still, there are some things they can’t do anything about. He’s on a variety of medications daily, for some of the many problems the reactor has caused him—nerve pain, open ends of bones and muscles and tendons against the reactor, reduced lung capacity and the problems with air exchange it causes him.

He refuses to take any sort of heavy pain meds, which has been a point of contention with his doctors before. With his history—and still ongoing struggle—with alcoholism, it not only wouldn’t mix well, but he’s afraid of becoming addicted. This is a problem that’s not going to go away any time soon, so he’d be on the drugs long-term. Besides that, he also can’t afford to be altered in any way when he has to be in the suit. That could be putting innocent lives in danger, and he won’t do it. Not even when his doctors tell him that his breathing is worse because it hurts him, that his heart is weaker for it. His heart sucks anyway.

The other debate they regularly have is whether to put him on blood thinners. They revisit the subject constantly, but in the end the decision has always remained the same. Despite his seriously elevated risk of clots because of the implanted reactor and the circulation problems it causes, his risk of life-threatening bleeds because of his occupation is still too high. He gets thrown around in the suit regularly, and though he tries to protect his head, he gets at least one mild or moderate concussion every six or seven months, it seems. All it would take is a single one to become an intracranial hemorrhage and he’d be dead. So that’s a no to the blood thinners.

What it all means is that he’s at high risk for clots and all of the problems that come along with them on a normal basis. Being out here now is probably making it worse. The cold, and… something. There are other reasons, he knows it. But thinking is becoming kind of hard, and it doesn’t matter, anyway. There’s nothing he can do about it.

Finally, just as it’s starting to get dark enough that tripping on something unseen is becoming a real possibility, Steve stops and turns around. “I think we’ve gone far enough for the night.”

Natasha and Clint nod, which makes Tony want to practically weep with joy. “We can stay up in shifts,” Nat says, looking around. “Keep a lookout. I can go first.”

Tony nods along a little blankly while they discuss the shifts for staying up. He’s not following conversations as well as it feels like he should. He does notice when the others start to move, though, saying something about getting rest while they can.

“So, huddling for warmth?” Tony says, but even now, his tone is still joking. He can’t stop it. He already feels like shit, and admitting his biggest weakness in front of the others now just seems impossible. “I like to be a little spoon.”

Clint chuckles. “In your dreams, Stark.”

Tony laughs, because it’s a joke, of course, he said it like a joke. And he knows about some of the missions Clint’s been on—he’s sat for days out in the snow, in worse conditions than this. Of course he would think it’s a joke.

Tony settles down against a tree, out of sight of the others but not out of earshot. They’ve all concealed themselves half-decently against their surroundings, making sure that anyone flying overhead won’t be able to spot them. Of course, if the well-equipped bad guys have any kind of heat-sensing equipment, it won’t be that hard to spot them, but they’ve got to be miles from where they last had an encounter, now. That’s what all the walking was for.

Tony thinks about taking his shoes off to find out the sorry state of his feet, but he can’t bring himself to do it. Now that he’s sitting down, with his weight off of them, they actually seem to hurt worse, which doesn’t make any sense. He draws his knees up to his chest, hiding the light of the reactor and hopefully shielding it from direct contact with the cold air.

He shivers violently a few times, ducking his head down to huff warm breath between his knees, against the reactor. Any attempt to really warm it up is futile. He’s so cold.

Someone could probably do something about it. He wishes he had a heating pad, out here, plug it into a tree or something. Or he could make a battery. They should have salvaged something from the gunships they wrecked—it’s not hard to make tech overheat, even if nothing else is working. Heat is the most basic form of energy. It’s easy to produce.

Not now, though. Heat seems hard to come by out here. Everything out here is cold and numb. His chest and his feet are cold and numb and throbbing. One side of his body is cold, too, why’s that? Is he having a stroke? His doctors always tell him it could happen. 

No, he’s on the ground. He could swear he was sitting up before, but now he’s sideways on the ground. Something hard against his back—tree. And the cold ground against his face. His arms pulled in against his chest, pressed against the reactor, except the reactor is cold. Even through the shirt it’s cold. He wants to keep his arms away from it, the cold hurts them. Except he doesn’t think he’s supposed to do that.

A thought about the cold drifts across his mind. He’s supposed to do something. Or… talk. Tell someone… something. It seemed important a while ago. Something he needs to tell people. But it’s not really coming to mind right at this moment.

It doesn’t seem so important now.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s fucking freezing, and Clint curses it in his head for probably the fifth time since his watch began after Nat’s. It’s repetitive and useless, but at least it’s something to do. 

Snipers are good at that. He can sit in uncomfortable positions for hours at a time without moving an inch as long as he has something to distract himself with in his head. Something inane, usually, because he still needs some part of himself to be focused, watching for the target. 

He’s employing that skill now, letting half of his mind drift and curse the cold and think about crappy camping and wish for warm fires, while the other half is constantly alert, watching for any movement in the darkness around them, listening for anything out of place. 

He’s not exactly a fan of sitting out here in the cold air, but he’s been in worse positions on missions before. At least it’s not actually below freezing. And while he isn’t really dressed for the weather, he could have less on. He had the foresight to grab a jacket when Nat woke him up this morning with that urgent tone she only uses when they’re in danger.

The cold brings up memories of past missions—some good, some bad. It’s not like he has flashbacks or anything, but sometimes it’s hard not to be reminded of things he’s done. He knows it’s the same for Nat, and possibly worse when it comes to the cold, having grown up and trained in Russia. Still, they both deal with it just fine.

It’s his teammates he’s really worried about. Tony hasn’t been on these kinds of missions before. He hasn’t had to deal with long periods of physical discomfort, except for that one notable foray to Afghanistan. The worst possible way to introduce someone to those things, as an untrained civilian, attacked and taken hostage and then forced to live in a cave for months, all while being tortured. It’s amazing Tony didn’t just lose his mind when he came back, become a shut-in or go completely batshit and try to attack everyone in sight or something. Clint knows very well that kind of thing messes someone up.

Which is why he’s been cursing himself for over a day for agreeing to come out here, for not thinking about that. He likes Tony, likes to think they’re friends, and he should have thought about it. Just because Tony regularly pretends everything is fine and won’t admit to weakness doesn’t mean Clint shouldn’t be anticipating problems.

And now they’re stuck sleeping on the cold ground once more after last night’s revelations, except it’s even worse this time, with no fire and no tents or sleeping bags or blankets. Tony’s probably pretty miserable, but Clint’s still not sure he’d accept any attempt at help. He certainly won’t accept pity or condescension, which Clint definitely can’t blame him for.

At least this cold isn’t actually enough to be dangerous, not if they’re only out here for one night. Hopefully SHIELD will be out in these woods looking for them by now. Clint pictures it, over and over, anticipating the moment they’re found and he can get warm and eat some decent food. Until then, he just has to sit here in the cold.

The teammate he’s most worried about is Steve. Everyone knows his story, and while most of the world thinks he just popped out of the ice totally fine, Clint knows about his hatred of the cold. He bundles up more than he needs to in the winter and avoids going outside. Every once in a while, Clint catches him recoiling or pausing around ice.

He never pushes it. Every person has their demons, particularly in their line of work, and they have the right to deal with them in their own way. It’s never stopped Steve from doing his job, so it’s none of Clint’s business.

Still, like with Tony, that doesn’t mean Clint can’t be concerned as a friend. Steve’s body can handle the cold better than any of them, but his mind has to be going some dark places. 

Steve’s not asleep, Clint knows. When Nat woke Clint to take his shift, he saw that Steve was awake and tried to convince him to rest, with no success. Steve just stared into the distance and said he was fine, looking haunted. Clint didn’t push it, partly because he didn’t know what to say, and partly because he knew there was no fixing it out here. Not until SHIELD comes for them.

Eventually, Clint’s shift comes to an end. He has an excellent internal clock, which has been counting away in his head. When it’s time, he stands, wincing at muscles stiff with cold and from squatting in the same position for hours. He takes a moment to roll his shoulders and shake out his hands and feet, flexing his fingers. 

It’s Tony’s turn next, and then Clint will probably climb up a tree and settle down to sleep. By this time in the night, any residual warmth the ground held from the day is gone. Before he goes to wake Tony up, he detours by the boulder Steve is concealed behind.

Steve looks up at him as he approaches, not bothering to conceal the fact that he’s clearly not asleep, or the stressed lines etched into his face. Even in the moonlight that’s barely enough to see by, Clint can tell those lines are there. “You should really get some rest, man,” Clint tries, keeping his voice near a whisper.

Steve takes a breath, glancing away for a moment. “I’m okay.”

Clint hesitates, then pushes, just a little. “We might still have to walk a lot more tomorrow. We could be attacked again any time. I know this sucks, but if you can, you really need the rest.”

Steve sighs, but relents. “You’re right. Yeah. I’ll try, okay?”

Clint nods, not knowing what else to say to that. It’s not his job to force Steve to sleep through bad memories and whatever else is bothering him. Instead, he just moves over to the tree where Tony settled down earlier in the night.

Tony’s curled on his side at the base of the tree. His hands are pulled partway in towards his chest, half-hiding the glow of the reactor. It’s muted through his shirt, but some of the light reaches Tony’s face, just barely illuminating it. His features look relaxed, at least, so Clint hopes that means he isn’t having nightmares or reliving whatever he was thinking when he was sleepwalking last night to memories of Afghanistan.

Clint bends down and puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder, giving him a gentle push. He’s not trying to scare the man awake, after all, but when he doesn’t get a response, he shakes a little harder. Tony’s not an agent, trained to wake in an instant with the slightest provocation, after all.

There’s still nothing. Something like alarm spikes in the back of Clint’s mind as he kneels down, shaking Tony again and saying his name in a low voice. When there’s still no response, the alarm becomes real, settling heavily into his gut and drying his mouth in an instant. 

He presses the fingers of one hand to Tony’s neck, grabbing for a wrist with the other, and nearly recoils from his ice-cold skin. Not daring to breathe, Clint leans down, pressing a little harder against Tony’s neck, angling up towards his jaw. It takes him a moment, but finally, he feels a pulse—slow, and not as strong as it should be. 

Clint abandons his grip on Tony’s wrist to hover the hand in front of his face. Again, it takes a second before he’s sure he feels the tiniest bit of warmth against the back of his hand. Tony’s breathing, but barely.

“Nat,” Clint says instinctively. She’s probably asleep by now, but he knows she’ll be awake in an instant at the sound of his voice. She’s a very light sleeper—she has to be—and he knows she’ll respond as fast to the alarmed tone in his voice as he did earlier to hers. Then, knowing he’s also still awake, Clint adds, “Steve. Get over here.”

It seems like they’re both at his side in a blink, kneeling down next to Tony’s still form. “What’s wrong?” Steve is already demanding, even as he reaches out his own hand to press against Tony’s neck, mirroring Clint’s earlier movements.

Clint shakes his head. “I don’t know. I came over to get him up for watch and he was like this. Pulse is slow, so is his breathing. I couldn’t wake him up.”

Nat frowns and puts the back of her own hand to Tony’s cheek, then runs it down his side to slip underneath his shirt, pressing against his back, closer to his core. “He’s freezing, but he’s not even shivering. That’s bad.”

“Why? It’s cold, but it’s not that cold,” Steve says, looking around at Clint and Nat. “I mean, you two are fine, right?”

‘Fine’ is relative, Clint thinks, but he nods anyway. What Steve’s asking is if the cold is affecting the non-enhanced badly enough for this. “Yeah, we’re okay. These temperatures shouldn’t be enough to cause this.”

Steve and Clint look at each other for a minute, lost. “Do you think he could have been, I don’t know, bitten by something? Some kind of venomous snake or spider or something?” Steve eventually suggests.

“We can check for bites,” Nat says, “but I think we need to take a look at the more obvious culprit first.”

She rolls Tony onto his back as she says it. As one, they all look down at the glow through Tony’s shirt, then back up at each other, and suddenly, Clint is terrified. He doesn’t know anything about the arc reactor. If something’s wrong with it, there’s basically zero chance any of them will be able to help. The only person who would even have a chance of fixing it is the one who’s affected when it’s broken, and who will definitely be of no help now.

Steve puts a palm flat on Tony’s chest for a moment, then pulls the neck of his shirt down to expose the reactor. Clint’s seen it a few times, but never this close, and never quite so exposed like this. He can’t help but stare at the scars surrounding it, looking at the way it sits in Tony’s chest and feeling sick at the thought of having something foreign implanted in him like that.

“I have no idea how to tell if anything’s wrong with it,” Steve admits after they all stare at it for a few moments.

Nat shakes her head. “Neither do I. He keeps information about this close to the chest.” Clint almost lets out a humorless laugh at the unintentional pun. “For obvious reasons. The only thing I know is that if it’s flickering, that’s bad, and if it’s out, put it back in. Other than that, I’ve never seen the plans. Even if I had, I don’t know that I’d know if anything is wrong just by looking at it.”

Clint’s eyes track the scars again, thinking about the bones he knows had to be sawed off and taken out to make room for the casing. He can’t imagine how it fits, and how it didn’t kill Tony just putting it in. Then, staring at it, it finally hits him.

“Guys. I don’t think anything’s wrong with the reactor. I think the reactor’s the problem.” Clint reaches out a hand and puts it directly on the metal, then withdraws it quickly—it’s cold. Way colder than anything in direct, constant contact with a human body should be.

Steve and Nat copy him, each pulling back the same way, while he talks. “Metal, in his body, in his _chest_, so close to his heart and his lungs? Exposed to the air out here? It’s been sapping heat from him all night. He’s been losing body heat ten times faster than any of us.”

As he says it, Clint recalls last night, when they were settling down. Tony’s quip about huddling for warmth—except maybe it wasn’t just a joke. Clint had taken it like one, and then brushed Tony off, assuming he was kidding. Looking back on it now, Clint hates himself that much more. Jesus, but they’ve just failed Tony time after time these past few days. This whole trip has been a disaster for him.

While Clint is chastising himself, Steve slips his hands underneath Tony’s shoulders and pulls him up easily. “We need to warm him up, then,” Steve says resolutely, pulling Tony in until he’s cradled in Steve’s arms, chest practically pressed to Steve’s. “I always run hot from the serum, I can hold him here.”

Tony’s practically sitting in Steve’s lap and the position would probably be comical and tease-worthy in any other circumstances. Now, though, it just makes Clint cringe to see. Tony’s limp, unconscious, in danger. His arms dangle at his sides and his head lolls back uncomfortably far until Steve’s hand comes up to push it over onto Steve’s shoulder.

Clint looks at the thin shirt Tony’s wearing. It might have long sleeves, but the material really isn’t very thick, and it’s certainly not meant to trap any warmth against the body. Making a quick decision, Clint pulls off his own jacket, motioning for Steve to tip Tony back a little so Clint can wrestle it onto him. Thankfully, they’re about the same size.

In response to Steve’s brief look of concern for the simple tank Clint’s wearing underneath his jacket, he just shakes his head. “It’s fine. I know how to keep warm, and unlike him, the cold really isn’t that bad for me. He needs it more.” Steve nods grimly and lets Clint pull the jacket onto Tony’s unresisting arms and zip it up his front.

Tasha is staring at Tony when he’s done, and though her face looks nearly neutral, Clint can sense the worry in her. “What?”

She glances up at him and the concern stretching between them increases tenfold when they make eye contact. He can practically feel Steve becoming agitated as they have a silent conversation, so when she starts speaking, he knows it’s mostly for Steve’s sake.

“I worry about what this could mean for him.”

Steve immediately clutches Tony a little tighter to him, and Clint doesn’t know if he wants to smile or grimace. Something about the gesture just seems so innocent and it’s bittersweet. “What do you mean?” Steve asks, worry practically choking his voice.

Nat frowns, an expression mostly for Steve, but Clint can tell it’s also real. This is her friend hurting and in danger, and that’s not a normal feeling for her. She’s used to trusting that her friends—who, until recently, have almost exclusively been other assassins, agents, or spies—can and will fend for themselves. And it’s not like Tony can’t, but Nat’s not used to dealing with medical problems, and unknown, intangible issues. Tony can deal with death threats and bombs and trauma incurred in the Iron Man suit, and if he needs it, she can help him with those. She can’t do anything about this.

“He has… problems, because of the reactor. And no, I don’t mean just the cold thing,” she adds when Steve’s eyebrows draw together. “Something foreign like that in the body, so invasive… I know he’s on a few different meds. I don’t know which ones, he keeps that information private and he doesn’t trust SHIELD with it.”

Clint can hear the regret in her tone. Tony has turned out to be more than a valuable asset; he’s a friend, to both of them, and he knows that Nat knows that friendship has been harder to build because of their history. Fury would never admit it, but it was a mistake, the way they originally approached Tony. Waiting until he was dying, manipulating him, withholding something that could have helped his symptoms, then screwing with him further by telling him he wasn’t good enough for the Avengers. It took Tony longer to really trust Nat than the rest of them, and as much as she tries to pretend it doesn’t matter, Clint knows it stings.

She shakes her head now. “I’m not a doctor and I’m not an expert on his situation. But having something like that in the body, I can only imagine the possibilities. The immune system doesn’t like it. It interrupts the circulatory system. Blood clots can form, they can turn into heart attacks, strokes, lodge in the lungs. I can’t say for sure, but having his temperature dropped so fast… that could make it worse.”

Steve looks a little like he might shit himself. Clint has too much discipline to let it show on his face, but he more or less feels the same. “What can we do?” Steve asks. Looking for solutions, as always.

“Nothing,” Clint says, and Steve turns those wide eyes to him. “We can try to warm him up and keep him warm, and we can hope SHIELD finds us fucking soon, and before any more of those assholes who attacked us do.”

He sees Steve swallow, and then look down at Tony held against him. “Well, then that’s what we’ll do.” He doesn’t seem to know what else to say. Clint can’t blame him.

Nat sits back, but Clint is seized by the sudden urge to do something, so he reaches for each of Tony’s hands in turn, feeling for the pulse at his wrists and then flexing and extending his unresisting fingers, trying to make sure blood is flowing to each of them. The cold isn’t so bad that he should be getting frostbite, but Clint doesn’t know if the lack of strong blood flow might be affecting them, and Tony would be devastated to wake up and find out something happened to his hands.

When he’s done that for a few minutes, feeling the weight of Steve’s silent gaze on him, he moves down to Tony’s feet. He should, at least, make sure he’s getting some circulation there. He carefully unlaces Tony’s expensive hiking boots and pulls them from his feet.

He pulls back the edge of one of Tony’s dark socks to feel for the pulse at the side of his ankle, but when he does, he’s distracted by something else. It’s hard to make out at first in the darkness, but soon it becomes clear what he’s looking at. Torn skin at the back of Tony’s ankle, bloody in the center from being rubbed completely raw by his boot.

Grimacing, Clint peels the sock the rest of the way off. There are similar areas of ruined skin on the sides of the foot and the tops of several toes. When he pulls the other sock off, he sees that the other foot is in a similar state.

Clint looks up and notices Steve watching with a pinched expression. “Brand new boots,” Clint says, although Steve probably doesn’t need the explanation, “and we probably walked at least thirty miles today.”

“Why wouldn’t he say anything?” Steve says, though again, Clint has a feeling he already knows the answer.

Clint shrugs, even though he knows he’s not fooling anyone with his feigned nonchalance. “What would we have done? It’s not like we could stop.”

He doesn’t say the other things he’s thinking. First, that Tony might not even have noticed it, with the pain from the reactor in his chest. Clint’s not sure if Steve knows about that one, but Nat has told him about when Tony was dying, and while he might have found a solution for the blood poisoning, there’s nothing he can do about the fact that he has a hunk of metal lodged in his chest, which sits there unyielding as his chest constantly needs to expand and contract and twist and move. Can’t be comfortable. More than once, Clint has caught him grimacing and rubbing at his chest on cold days or after training or battles.

He also doesn’t feel the need to share the other likely reason for Tony’s silence with Steve. That Tony would rather have walked until he collapsed than tell the others he was having trouble. Tony’s a proud man, and Clint has seen the ill-disguised hurt in his eyes whenever any of the others assume he’ll be lacking during training or missions, in any way. 

Tony’s a metalworker and an engineer, and he works out regularly. He’s not physically weak by any means, and even though he obviously couldn’t stand up to a super soldier or trained agents in a fistfight, he despises being thought of as weak or sheltered. He could outsmart just about anyone on the planet, of course, and even if he were physically subpar he could probably think himself a solution to just about any situation he might find himself in, but that doesn’t stop him from constantly trying to prove that he’s not weaker in brawn just because he’s stronger in brains. 

Tony wouldn’t want any of their pity for this, and he’ll be embarrassed enough about this entire situation, Clint’s sure, when he wakes, without even mentioning anything about the state of his feet. So Clint lets the excuse of his new boots hang in the air, and he pulls Tony’s socks and then his boots back on after confirming that he’s got a half-decent pulse in both feet, and he lets Steve rearrange Tony so he’s—hopefully—resting more comfortably in his arms while still pressing as much of his body as possible into serum-driven warmth.

Nat has backed off, ostensibly to keep the watch up while Clint and Steve are very much distracted with Tony. Clint knows she’s also withdrawing to think. She does that when she’s worried, especially about people.

“I’ll take watch for the rest of the night,” Steve murmurs. “I was awake anyway, and I can keep an eye on him.” He indicates Tony with his chin, then looks back up at Clint. “You should try to get some rest.”

Clint gives him a pained smile at the repetition of his own earlier words, then nods and retreats to where Nat is standing. He knows she heard Steve, and she’ll go and rest herself—her body, at least, if not her mind. That’s a talent both of them have developed, living the lives they do. Even when things are tense and dangerous, or they’ve seen horrific sights just hours earlier, they know their bodies need rest, and they’re capable of forcing that even when their minds are in overdrive.

Clint puts a hand on her back, a brief and barely-there touch, as he walks by to hoist himself up into a tree to sleep. It’s all he needs to tell her everything he’s thinking—to impart his own worry but also his reassurance, to check up and make sure she’s okay and grounded in the moment, and to thank her for everything she’s done and will do on this trip.

He does manage a few hours of sleep, forcing his body to rest even while he remains partially on alert, ready to wake up any moment. He doesn’t dream, not quite far enough down for that, but his thoughts run off in random directions.

His eyes snap open immediately when he feels a touch on his foot, even while his mind is already categorizing it as known and friendly. It’s Nat, reaching up into the low tree where he’s situated himself. He blinks down at her, noting that the forest around them is turning from gray-blue to green; the sun is rising.

He makes a quiet, gentle jump down from the tree, shaking out stiff limbs and allowing himself one deep shudder at the goosebumps that spring up now that he’s fully awake and not forcing his senses into mission-sleep mode. He’s pretty damn cold without his jacket, though he doesn’t for a second regret putting it on Tony, and he’s now looking forward to getting moving again to warm himself up.

He feels Tasha’s hand on his arm, a single, brief touch, a mirror to all the things he imparted to her with his touch hours ago. He allows himself the tiniest hint of a smile at the contact. The smile falls, though, when he comes around the side of the boulder Steve is leaning against and lays eyes on Tony again.

Tony’s not conscious, and in the early morning light, he looks pale and sick, worse than last night, when Clint couldn’t really see him that well. The one good sign is that even from several feet away, Clint can tell he’s shivering violently where he sits pressed against Steve’s chest.

“How’s he doing?” Clint asks as he kneels next to them. It’s a stupid question, he knows, but he can’t really help asking.

Steve is wearing that constipated look, as Tony likes to call it, that he gets when things are going wrong on a mission and there’s nothing he can do about it. “He started shivering about an hour ago,” he says, “so at least he’s improving. Beyond that, I have no idea. He hasn’t woken up.”

There are footfalls behind them. Steve looks up at Nat; Clint doesn’t bother looking up as he stands, recognizing her steps. “We should start moving again now that the sun is up,” she says, quiet but sure. “They could be looking for us.” Clint knows she isn’t talking about SHIELD.

Steve nods, then looks down at Tony. “I’ll carry him, it’s not a problem.”

“Try to keep him close—keep him warm,” Nat says, and Steve nods again, shifting Tony around in his arms and preparing to get to his feet.

Before he can do it, there’s a soft groan and Tony pulls one of his arms in towards his chest, turning his head restlessly. In a flash, Clint and Nat are both kneeling at Steve’s side, peering at Tony’s face.

Tony’s eyebrows have pulled together, his face twisting into a grimace even with his eyes closed. He’s in pain, obviously, and probably cold as all hell. Clint can’t imagine what the reactor must be feeling like. It might be better that he’s still unconscious.

Of course, always contrary, Tony chooses that moment to open his eyes. It’s only about halfway, and they look glassy and exhausted and confused, but they’re open.

“Tony?” Steve says immediately, the arm around Tony’s shoulders tilting him back a little more so they can look into his face. 

Tony’s eyes flicker between them, but it’s clear he’s not really seeing them. He makes another wordless groan, then moves his mouth like he’s trying to say something, but all that comes out is a few slurred, incomprehensible syllables. After a few more seconds, his eyes slide closed again.

“Tony?” Steve sounds a little more alarmed now, giving him a light shake, but Clint sits back, shaking his head.

“Let him sleep.”

Steve turns wide eyes to him. “Shouldn’t we keep him awake?” The way he looks to Nat makes it clear what he’s worried about. Not just that Tony’s unconscious, but everything Nat talked about last night. Strokes, heart attacks, other horrifying medical complications. Problems they’re terrified of, coming from the device they never really thought much of until now.

She says the same thing Clint’s thinking. “Being awake won’t change anything, and he’s not lucid anyway. If he were really awake, walking would get the blood flowing better, but the way he is now, even if he keeps his eyes open, he’s not going to be able to move well enough on his own.”

Clint, then, realizes what she didn’t see last night. It doesn’t really matter anyway, at this point, but the guilt he’s stewing in prompts him to say it. “His feet are in rough shape. He shouldn’t be walking on them either way.”

He can see a lot of his own emotions reflected in Steve’s eyes. Empathetic hurt, guilt, then determination. “So I’ll carry him,” Steve says.

And he does just that. When he finally stands, shifting to hold Tony more securely in his arms, Tony moans again and then mumbles some more, but he still doesn’t wake. Looking more determined than ever, Steve moves to hold Tony as close to his own chest as possible, and they set off.

Clint supposes he should be glad they have Steve. Clint and Nat are both capable of carrying a grown man if they need to; both of them could even handle having to drag Steve’s weight around, though it would be a struggle to do it for more than maybe a mile or so. Tony, who’s relatively small, wouldn’t be so bad, but it would still be tiring, and it would slow them down significantly. With Steve doing the heavy lifting, if it slows him down at all, it just slows him to a normal human pace. Clint and Nat are moving just as fast as yesterday, when all of them were awake and moving under their own power, and Clint’s sure that they can keep going at this pace all day if they need to.

Thankfully, they don’t. They’ve been hiking for maybe an hour and a half when they hear the sound of engines overhead. It’s not the whine of the gunships from yesterday, but they still rush to conceal themselves in the trees, just in case.

But it’s a SHIELD quinjet, and as soon as he’s sure of it, Clint is up a tree in seconds, deliberately shaking the branches at the top to get their attention. Pulling himself up into the unstable top branches, he’s just able to reach an arm out to signal to the ship when he sees it turn around. He calls down to Nat below to move into a nearby clearing, Steve following her quickly.

By the time he’s back on the ground and running to where he directed the quinjet to land, SHIELD agents are descending on their small group. Someone onboard must have seen the form in Steve’s arms, because two of them are medics, rushing immediately to where Steve is standing. Nat gives them an abbreviated rundown of Tony’s condition. The moment they hear it’s arc reactor related, they’re whisking Tony away, leaving the rest of them to talk to the other agents.

Steve gives a brief overview of what little they know about their attackers to the agents, but his eyes keep moving back to the quinjet. It’s obvious where his mind really is. They’ll need to have a real, formal debrief now that their vacation turned into a mission anyway, so soon enough, they’re all piling onto the ship.

All three of them practically collapse onto their seats in the jet, exhausted, dirty, and worried. Tony’s out of sight in the back, and Clint has to tell himself repeatedly that he’s in the hands of people who can take care of him. If he goes back there, he’ll just be in the way.

Instead, he spends the journey first reflecting on the trip and the things they’ve all realized about Tony. He manages a tiny, strained smile to himself when he thinks about how difficult Tony’s going to be when he wakes up. He hates being injured, and despises attempts to force him to rest. He’ll be sneaking out of medical and back to his workshop the second he’s able to stand on his own feet.

Clint’s perfectly willing to be there to help him. He’s not that big a fan of being stuck in medical himself, and he certainly feels partly responsible for the condition Tony’s in now. He’s forcing himself to think about _when_ Tony is completely recovered, which is more optimistic than an agent usually is, because he can’t stand the thought of Tony being permanently damaged—physically or, worse, mentally—by this trip.

Just as they’re landing back at a SHIELD base, a thought strikes Clint. They’re going to need to tell this news to various people. Steve, leader and all, will be the first to tell the other Avengers. Nat’s going to report directly to Fury and SHIELD for the both of them before they’re called in for individual reports. 

Which leaves Clint the job of telling those closest to Tony. He spends the last minute of the flight wondering what the hell he’s going to tell Pepper and Rhodes. And which one he’s more afraid of.

His conclusion, later, is that he’s equally terrified of both, and that everything he thought he owed Tony for his part in putting him in that situation should be considered more than repaid by the double near-death experience that was telling James Rhodes and Pepper Potts that the Avengers’ little “team bonding exercise” put Tony in the hospital with bullet grazes and life-threatening hypothermia. 

But exactly seven days after the end of the camping trip from hell, Tony sends him three new arrow upgrades and eight boxes of his favorite girl scout cookies—branded, he notices with a laugh, with pictures of little girls happily camping in the woods—so he figures they’re even.


End file.
